A bitter-Tweet Night for the GOP

As President Barack Obama delivered his unofficial State of the Union address Tuesday night, some Republicans at the Capitol and elsewhere provided harsh reviews by Twitter – at least until they did a 180 to adopt a more respectful tone.Early on during Obama’s speech, the office of Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton sent out a Tweet saying: “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour.”

That Tweet was followed minutes later by another: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.”

Republican Rep. John Culberson of Texas warned during the speech: “Hold onto your wallet America.” A short while later, he added: “We are at war — seems to me honoring our troops should come on page one rather than the end of the speech.”

But just three minutes after that, Culberson seemed to get the message that his message might not be playing well outside the chamber. “This is a great privilege to be here and I will try hard to find ways to work together while preserving my core principles,” he Tweeted.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, weighing in from afar, mixed praise with snarky criticism throughout the evening. He said Obama’s “call for education reform is encouraging and if he is willing to fight for it would be historic,” that “Electronic health records are a good cause” and that “Energy healthcare and education are powerful zones for americans to focus on and if president obama is willing to innovate we should help.”

But Gingrich said Obama’s shout-out to Vice President Joe Biden – “Nobody messes with Joe” — as well as his smile and his handshake with Pelosi resembled “a democratic pep rally not a state of the union—sophomoric and silly.” He said that “Speaker Pelosi standing up to applaud the private jet line while she flies around in a government jet at taxpayer expense verges on bizarre.”